The UCD School of Music is the frequent home for conferences sponsored by the Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI) and the Irish branch of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) Ireland.
Music, Musicology and Academic Responsibilities in the 21st Century
1-3 July 2024
This conference engages with recent epistemic, ethical and methodological issues in music and musicology.
Among the topics the conference is focusing on are polarisation, truth and relativism, ethical considerations, intersectionality, objectivity, and the relationship of musical practice and musicology.
Visit the conference webpage for the Conference Schedule, linked here.
Friday 13 September 2024
Online conference on the entanglements between creative practices, performing (in)visibility, and reinforcing senses of (non-)belonging.
More details on the conference can be found here.
Thursday, 13 June - Friday, 14 June 2024
More details on the conference can be found here.
Conference details
Recognising these mediations on digital dancing bodies and the scope of such largely unexplored digital interventions in Indian classical dance, we call for an in-person symposium to contribute to a growing body of dance research. This two-day symposium to be held on the 13th and 14th of June 2024 and hosted by University College Dublin, aims to bring scholar-practitioners, artists, and researchers working with Indian dance together to explore these recent transformations. Dr Prarthana Purkayastha (Royal Holloway University, London), whose work revolves around the intersections of Indian dance studies and transnationalism, identity, diaspora, and decoloniality, will deliver the keynote address.
Music and Pleasure before the Law International Conference
Wednesday, 28 June 2023 - Thursday, 29 June 2023
Humanities Institute
Conference Details
Today, scholars interested in expanding and diversifying the way we think music and sex together are faced with a rift between intellectual and political landscapes. On the one hand, such inquiry has been legitimized by more than thirty years of scholarship that has celebrated music’s capacity to represent myriad sexual experiences and identities, as well as its ability to engender radical, destabilizing forms of sonic pleasure. On the other, recent successful political and legal efforts to curtail sexual rights in the name of moral or religious objection are unwinding gains made from identity-based political action. To better navigate this climate, we seek to step back from the traditional focus on how musicians or musical works represent specific sexual desires and identities to interrogate the larger institutional, administrative, and discursive forces that conterminously shape the history of music and sexuality.
Intentionally returning to Foucault’s interest in the emergence and productivity of disciplinary practices, this conference aims to examine moments where music and pleasure have been brought together before the law or, more generally, any authoritative discourse which purports to regulate human behavior. Inviting scholars to share diverse historical and cultural situations, we intend to collectively and investigate the following questions: To what extent have legal or doctrinal discourses considered music and sexuality as analogous issues? What are the shared tactics used to regulate or manage musical and sexual behaviors? What actions have been taken by marginalized individuals or groups to undercut, evade, or reform discourses that limited musical and sexual freedom? What methodological, theoretical, or conceptual resources are needed to tackle such issues? Responding to these questions, we hope to consider how our reactions to contemporary sexual politics can draw from those who have previously encountered the varied, but historically persistent forces that attempt to bring order to the unruly world of sexual and musical experience.
Friday, 20 January 2023 - Saturday, 21 January 2023
UCD School of Music
Belfield, Newman Building, Room J307
More details on the conference are found here
The joint annual Postgraduate Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland and the Irish National Committee of the International Council for Traditional Music took place on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 January 2023. This was the first campus-based SMI and ICTM-IE Postgraduate Conference since January 2020. Both societies are renowned for their collegiality, and were delighted to welcome participants in-person once again to take advantage of all that the conference has to offer.
Highlights of the programme included the presentation of the biennial Harry White Doctoral Prize, inaugurated in 2020, the Careers Forum and a dedicated session featuring prize-winners of the annual CHMHE competition for undergraduate dissertations.
The keynote address was delivered by (opens in a new window)Dr Tim Summers (Royal Holloway, University of London), entitled “Awkward Questions for Musicologists or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Video Game Music”.
Event Archive
Friday, 30 September 2022, 2.00pm
UCD School of Music
Belfield, Newman Building, Room J305
2.00pm
Annegret Fauser (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Re/Composing Memory: Musical Commemoration and National Trauma
2.45pm
Diarmaid Ferriter (University College Dublin)
Faith, Reason and Betrayal: The Irish Civil War
3.30 pm: Coffee Break
4.00pm
Cécile Chemin (Military Service Pensions Project, Military Archives of Ireland)
Civil War Archives: Somewhere between Truth and Memory
4.45pm
Síobhra Aiken (Queen’s University Belfast)
Civil War Silence? The Many Neglected Testimonies from the Irish Civil War
This symposium—held in the afternoon preceding the (opens in a new window)world premiere of the cantata—will embed the work in its historical context, yet also look at it from a literary and musical point of view. Four speakers will discuss the sources on which the libretto is based, the ways in which the work reflects on issues of memory, pain and identity, the nature of literary and musical commemoration, and how the views of the civil war generation interact with ours today. Each talk will be followed by an opportunity for questions and discussion; after two presentations there will be a coffee break.
The symposium will conclude at 5.30pm, before the concert commences at 7.30pm.
Please register (for free) at (opens in a new window)https://civilwarcantata.ie/symposium/